To open up 2022, I thought it might be a nice change of pace to dig into some of the copious documentaries on kanopy.com. With documentaries you haven’t seen, I think it’s always a crapshoot, but I think we hit a home run in our first at bat with Benjamin Ree‘s 2020 masterpiece The Painter And The Thief.
Barbora Kysilkova is a painter, primarily in large-canvas oils, who by the opening of the film has fled an abusive relationship in her native Czech Republic to Norway with a new significant other. Her work is being featured in a gallery exhibition when she receives distressing news – there has been a break-in at the gallery and two of her important paintings have been stolen.
News footage from the time reports that rather than using a knife to cut the paintings from the frames, the thieves went to the very time-consuming effort of removing every individual nail from the frame in order not to damage the art. Fortunately – at least for the rule of law – the two thieves were captured on security camera, which eventually leads to their arrest.
Karl-Bertil Nordland is one of these thieves. A career criminal and heroin junkie, he seems to be one of the least-likely candidates for a friendship with Barbora. Nevertheless, at his trial, Barbora shows up, not to confront him, but to ask him if he will sit for a portrait. It’s fairly clear that Karl-Bertil feels trapped in this situation, but he does agree to do so, slowly gaining at least a modicum of trust in Barbora as they get to know each other. Barbora, of course, pumps him as delicately as she can to try to determine what has become of her paintings, but Karl-Bertil claims (probably honestly) that he was so messed up on heroin at that time that he doesn’t know. He took one, his partner took another, and where they are, he doesn’t know.
The first breakthrough of the film comes when Barbora reveals the first of her paintings to Karl-Bertil. He breaks down in tears. You can imagine that Barbora’s forgiveness and growing friendship are quite moving for someone who should probably expect her to hope he rots in jail. One hopes that this moment will inspire Karl-Bertil to turn his life around – in fact, the director notes that this was the time when he decided to change the documentary from a short-form to a full feature, following the pair for several more years – but we aren’t going to be given quite such a neat reversal.
Barbora continues to paint Karl-Bertil as she ministers to his soul, including a somewhat provocative painting with Karl-Bertil and his lingerie-clad girlfriend lying on a sofa. But Karl-Bertil remains elusive, emotionally unavailable, and will often disappear for days or weeks at a time while Barbora tries vainly to contact him. Karl-Bertil does finally commit to check himself into rehab, but just before going in, he relapses and gets kicked out by his girlfriend.
Following another one of his disappearances, Barbora learns that Karl-Bertil has stolen and crashed his girlfriend’s car, and he is in the hospital in a coma. Barbora comes to visit him frequently, and due to his extensive injuries that required several pins to hold his hips together, Karl-Bertil needs to learn to walk again. And of course, once he’s fully healthy, he’s released not to society, but to a one-year jail sentence. Naturally, this probably turns out to be the best rehab he could possibly have.
In the meantime, Barbora has contacted Karl-Bertil’s accomplice, still interested in recovering her paintings if at all possible. She learns that one of her paintings – the upper one above – was given to a local gang leader, and with a little help she manages to get herself into a storage facility known to be used by the gangster. Lo and behold, there she does find the painting, still rolled up and untouched several years later. Like Bono, she steals it back.
But when Karl-Bertil finally gets out of jail, she doesn’t tell him about this, worrying that it will trouble him when she wants him to get his life together. And, evidently, get his life together he does. He hooks up with a new – much more professional – girlfriend, and he gets back to carpentry, the trade he knew before falling into full-time crime. Finally, with a new exhibition coming up, Barbora decides to tell a healthily-pudgy Karl-Bertil about the recovery of the painting, and asks him to come assist in preparations for the gallery. And so, a journey which started with Karl-Bertil removing the nails from the picture’s frame concludes with him nailing the same picture back to a new frame. And of course, the film has one final painting reveal – a new canvas based on the intimate painting on the sofa, where Barbora replaces the old girlfriend. The End.
This documentary is a literal piece of art, both cinematographically and thematically. It’s a story of forgiveness and redemption that is so exquisitely constructed that it’s hard to believe it’s a documentary. To be honest, it’s hard to tell just how much of the film might be reconstructed, or events manipulated, but I’m not sure it matters. If this film were a fictional script, it would still carry the same emotional heft. I do have to admit that the final shot, which reveals Barbora painting herself into an intimate scene with Karl-Bertil is a bit ambiguous. I don’t think it’s intended to imply any sort of sexual relationship between them, either past or present or sought by either party. Nonetheless, it has to be emblematic of their emotional intimacy. Barbora has poured a great deal of her life into making Karl-Bertil whole again, and this serves as an image that represents what the viewer hopes is a bond that will never be broken.
Cinema 1544: The As-Official-As-It-Gets Site 